Cloudburst
by GodzillaGuy92
Summary: I thought I knew what I wanted. Thought I knew what to live for. But I didn't count on my entire reason for living being turned upside down. Nor did I count on it being destroyed... especially by me.


Wow. What do I say? I guess that I can't believe I actually wrote this chapter, for this story, in this section. Not entirely sure what I'm getting myself into with this, especially considering my history of abandoning stories... but maybe I can make this little story I've got planned out in my head work after all.

Ahem. Hello readers, and welcome to my first Twilight story (and my first full-length story for quite some time now). I've had this concept in my head for kind of awhile now, and I was thinking it over in my head yesterday and it really evolved into something that got me excited, so... here I am. Unfortunately, I can't really reveal too much about what exactly the concept is or how I came up with it without spoiling the story's major events (I can't even tell you guys what the point of the title is, for much the same reason), so you guys will just have to read and eventually find out for yourselves. Sorry. Hopefully it won't be too bumpy a ride. So without further ado, here's the first chapter. Enjoy!

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**Chapter 1**

**The Hunt**

The man was alone, that matter was plain enough. Even with the glaring lack of other footsteps, heartbeats, or breaths, it would have been simple to deduce this knowledge. He kept his eyes focused more-or-less forward, completely unconcerned with the distance he was putting behind him. If he'd had any company following behind him, doubtless he would be unconsciously glancing over his shoulder every now and then to ensure they were still there. I felt the corners of my mouth curl upward, though I already knew perfectly well that no one else was with him; seeing the confirmation for myself was nonetheless pleasant. Not that his death would have been any less inevitable had he been accompanied by anyone, of course, but the horrified screams of his theoretical wife or children, should they have chosen to come with him tonight, would have undoubtedly gotten on my nerves.

Part of me felt slightly uncomfortable. It made no difference whether he knew I was here or not, but it was the nature of predators to ambush their prey, and surely this prey knew I was there. All that protected me from his gaze was the bush I was crouching behind and the cover of nightfall - both painfully inadequate means of concealing oneself. Could not even his feeble human sense of sight pinpoint the gaps in the scraggly mass of leaves and twigs that I watched him through, see my pale body and intense burgundy stare lurking a mere dozen meters away?

Or even if his eyesight failed to catch these glaringly obvious signs of my presence, what of the sound of my deep, even breathing - steadily increasing in tempo as his steps took him closer to my hiding spot - or the sweet aroma that poured from the bodies of all members of my kind? For the love of all that was holy, he was even downwind (currently the only reason he was still alive; if his scent had been blowing in my direction his body would have already been disposed of by now). It was ludicrous to think for even a moment that the man was not in complete awareness of my presence, his mind frantically coming up with ways with which to defend himself...

But no. Neither the man's heart rate nor his breathing nor his facial expression betrayed any knowledge of my existence. Somehow, incredibly, I remained undetected. I could not help shaking my head and giving out a forlorn sigh from behind my cover. Such pathetic creatures. Humans might as well have been born blind, deaf, and without limbs for all the good any of these attributes did them. I wondered for a moment how they could stand it, being so completely... limited. Hopelessly encumbered by such a lack of strength that they had to resort to using foolish machines just to move around, senses so limited that it almost caused me physical pain just to imagine it. And, of course, the memories I was ashamed to still possess from my time as one of them, so hazy and unclear that for the first twenty-five years or so of my life - I had forgotten what my actual age had been when I had been changed - I very well could have been constantly intoxicated. A shudder of disgust ran through me. I forced myself to bring my attention back to my prey.

He was middle-aged, probably in his late forties at the youngest. He wore a brown leather jacket lined on the inside with flannel and a pair of slightly faded jeans. Traveling from one of its pockets up to his head was a thin white cord that split in two before its rounded ends came to a rest in either of his ears; the music that drifted out of these curious devices (some unintelligible nonsense about "leaving out all the rest") was turned to such a volume that it was a bit louder than his footsteps. His head had only slightly more hair than his upper lip, both of which were salt-and-pepper-colored. No great physical specimen either, even by human standards; his belly bounced up and down as he moved in a manner not entirely unlike waves breaking near the seashore, and smaller rolls of fat on his thighs and forearms mimicked it. Although he was still unaware of me, his breathing and heartbeat was much faster than was standard for humans, a sure sign of exhaustion. His steps resembled more a barely-controlled stumble than a jog, the way a deer tries to keep moving even after the wolf pursuing it scores a wound on its flank. Even his gray eyes had a blank expression to them, suggesting he was trying to make himself feel numb. Clearly a nighttime jog wasn't standard routine for this poor fellow; I could only imagine his reasons for deciding to give it a try tonight. A combination of stupidity and bad luck, I supposed; one side of my mouth curled upward again.

The human was getting closer now, only eight meters away. I shifted my crouch slightly - angled my arms a bit further behind me, moved my right leg slowly forward. The perfect stance for leaping out of the bush suddenly, propelling myself directly into the dirt path where the human moved. The force would knock us both into the nearby woods. I aimed my body slightly further to the right so that my intended path would not result in the destruction of any trees; no sense in attracting undue attention.

My pose thus idealized, all that remained now was to wait. I suppressed the usual surge of impatience that always rose up within me during times like these. Always a useful exercise, and I was still improving - every time seemed just a bit easier than the last. My smirk grew more pronounced as I subconsciously remembered, again, just how the virtue of patience would come to serve me well in due time. Apart than that, the only movement from me was my eager breathing and the steady, determined movement of my neck and head, eyes never straying from the human's body. The venom flow in my mouth increased in anticipation.

At last, my prey's labored steps brought it directly into my predetermined path, and I let myself concentrate on what I had been deliberately forcing myself not to dwell on: the sound of his heartbeat. It was not as enticing as his scent would have been, but it was enough. I could feel the brief pulse of his body heat in the air between us as the wet _swoosh _of his blood moving through his veins overwhelmed me entirely and my throat burst into ravenous flames. I could not have held myself back even if the insane thought had found me, even if for some unfathomable reason I wanted to resist the luscious scarlet river of euphoria that flowed so freely just within my reach - I leaped forward with every ounce of strength my legs possessed.

And then all I was aware of for the next few minutes was the parting of his skin beneath my teeth, opening eagerly under their touch like the bloom of flowers in the spring, and then the release of nectar, the heavenly _nectar_, so hot against my mouth, must have _more_, quench the fire in my throat, can't stop, so good, can't think, can't stop can't ever stop need more more gushing down my throat not fast enough nothing else exists fire pleasurepainpleasure_pleasure_can'tstopso_warmfasterfirepleasurecan'tstopcan'tstopcan't-_

It stopped.

My breathing immediately became slow and even once again. I detached myself from what I assumed was the corpse's neck and stood back up in one fluid motion. I sucked in a lung-full of air, momentarily giving myself to the scents of the trees and the bushes and the grass and the earth and the memory of the blood before exhaling in a contented sigh, then turned to give a clinical observation of the body. Only its right side was recognisable as human at all; judging by the pulverized splinters of bone protruding from its shapeless left flank, the force of my collision had shattered every bone in his body, killing him before he had even gotten the slightest notion that something was wrong. A huge, ravaged gash near the top was all that remained of the neck. All of it, even the open wound and the shredded tissue inside it, was the same unhealthy shade of translucent white, already beginning to form a sickly bluish tinge. Not a drop of blood remained to color the body.

I turned my gaze away from my creation to something slightly more concerning. I must have underestimated myself; I hadn't noticed during my frenzy that not only had my pounce created a narrow but deep gash in the ground from where we had skidded along it, but also that this gash had cut directly through a fully-grown Western Yew... or rather, the trunk of a Western Yew lying alongside a jagged stump it had been attached to a few minutes previous. I frowned at the spectacle, slightly disturbed. That had not gone according to plan. Maybe I could use a bit more... practice...

_Practice. _The word hit me as hard as the realization: I had completely forgotten to practice earning the man's trust before killing him.

A furious snarl ripped from my throat; in my peripheral vision, a raccoon, sniffing around for something edible approximately eighty meters away, raised its head in alarm and promptly retreated in the opposite direction. For a moment I was sorely tempted to run up and snap its spine with a well-placed kick, anything to relieve my frustration... but, no, that would only be yet another lapse of control. Though I could not keep my teeth from clenching with enough force to crush steel, nor my hands from curling into fists that would have reduced diamonds to mere particles of sand... I controlled myself.

Fine. So I had wasted an opportunity. The only thing that made sense to do was to make up for it as thoroughly as possible. I nodded to myself, my own train of thought beginning to calm me; my hands gradually unclenched, and my jaws relaxed. I occupied my body with cleaning up my mess, leaving my mind free to explore the possibilities.

What had I not already attempted? I'd experimented with all types of things: frightening them by coming up behind them unexpectedly, or suddenly jumping out from behind cover. Making my expression appear angry and resentful as I spoke with them, pretending I had a contagious illness. One time I had even walked out into partial sunlight in front of a human, watching the undisguised awe on his face as I allowed the shimmering beads to reflect off my skin in plain sight of them (the Volturi could not punish me for this even if they somehow found out; after all, thanks to me the human would never again be in any condition to tell anyone). And every time, no matter what I did, no matter how bizarre my behavior, no matter how alarming my initial appearance, I eventually succeeded in gaining their trust before I allowed myself to engorge myself with them. (The one where I stepped into the sunlight had been particularly entertaining, if supremely easy; all I'd had to do was tell him I was an angel and his mind had opened to me so completely I almost recoiled from the force of it.)

So plainly something altogether new was required this time. I was hardly aware of my hands burying the man's body as I concentrated on this idea. I had used up all the methods I could think of for simply meeting random people in the middle of forests or mountain trails. I needed something... something more... _relevant. _Something closer to how I would utilize my talent in the future.

I was still too engrossed in my thoughts to consciously realize that I had finished balancing the trunk back on the tree, shifting the dirt so as to hide the ditch I had created in the ground, and burying the corpse far enough away so that no one would find it nor connect it to the damage done to the local scenery. Now I had aimlessly wandered back to the road - right into the path the man had been walking before.

The lingering scent caught me entirely off-guard, and instantly all the usual reactions followed: the dry aching in my throat, the tensing of my muscles, the excess venom flow. I might very well have sunk into a hunting crouch right then had it not been for my self-control - even in my current state a small part of me managed to feel slightly proud of my ability to do that much. However, much more powerful was a slow-moving wave of inspiration that spread through my body like the effects of a narcotic...

My lips peeled back into a triumphant smile of their own accord, which I made no effort to stop, before I turned in the direction the human's scent originated from and shot along the dirt road at full speed like a missile being fired from its silo. With any luck, I would reach whatever city he had traveled here from within minutes. I laughed with excitement and a determined sense of glee as the earth flew away beneath me.

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Well, I actually think that chapter turned out fairly well. And it wasn't even that hard to write (probably more of a result of recently rereading _Breaking Dawn _and the partial draft of _Midnight Sun _than anything, both of which help immensely with imagining how events look through a vampire's eyes), even though it took something around five hours to write. Hmm. Very very interesting.

Anyway, I hope this isn't just the 2:30-in-the-morningness making me delusional, so if you liked it, reviews confirming that this chapter was indeed good would be are mucho apreciado. And if you're confused about my vampire's "special talent," what he plans to do with it, what gaining peoples' trust has to do with it, and what he's got planned in the city, don't worry, because you're supposed to be. Answers will be revealed in future chapters. However, until then, anyone who wants is free to guess. See you next chapter!


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